Normally, we don’t talk box office here, but this story caught my eye and was too amazing to not pass along.
If you haven’t heard of the Uma Thurman comedy Motherhood, don’t worry. Not a lot of people have. In its four weeks of theatrical release last year, it screened in just 48 theaters, earning an anemic $93,388 at the box office. But in England, the film has reportedly done even worse. The plan seemed to be to have it open on just one screen in London and hope that its exclusivity builds interest for a wider release. However, anything but that happened. According to the Guardian –
Over its opening weekend, no more than a dozen people went to see Motherhood, a semi-autobiographical account of stressed-out Manhattan parenting written and directed by Katherine Dieckmann. The film made just £88 (approximately $130) on the weekend of Friday 5 March. On its debut Sunday, box office takings were £9, meaning one person bought a ticket.
There have been plenty of films that have bombed at the box office, some even worse than Motherhood. The 2006 indie Zyzzyx Road, with Tom Sizemore and Katherine Hiegl, infamously earned $30 during its six day release in one Dallas, Texas cinema to become the lowest grossing film of all time. The Paris Hilton headlining 2008 comedy The Hottie & The Nottie only earned $27,696 during the one week it was on 111 screens , with an average of just 28 people per theater seeing the movie opening weekend.
